


All Tied Up

by ProfessionalMess



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But they love him, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Self-Indulgent, This Is STUPID, but hopefully it doesnt suck, exasperated team voltron, idk what tags to add to this, im sorry, lance has a rough day, lance is a dummy, this was just for fun, very little klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessionalMess/pseuds/ProfessionalMess
Summary: Lance gets tied up with a lot of rope and not even in a sexual kind of way, just in a "I walked into a fucking trap" kind of way





	All Tied Up

**Author's Note:**

> this is completely self-indulgent and shorter than usual but just kind of a stress reliever for me ?? and also it's kind of a mess. 
> 
> i used “fuck” way ?? too many ?? times ?? i’m sorry

“Lance?” Pidge sighed. “Please explain to me how this happened.”

 

“I think it’s pretty obvious, Pidge,” Lance replied, slinging his gun up to rest on his shoulder. “You guys were all walking around trying to get through the base and complete the mission, I was bringing up the rear keeping lookout, I stopped to shoot some Galra fuckers in the face, one Galra fucker got the drop on me and shot my suit, _none of you stopped walking_ while I defended your helpless asses, so I took a wrong turn and became separated from the group and now cannot be located because my suit is broken and all of these hallways look _exactly the same_.”

 

Pidge sighed long and loud into the comms, as if this was somehow Lance’s fault. “There’s a good chance I can re-establish the connection with your suit, but it’ll take a while, and it probably won’t happen until we’ve completed the mission. Can you avoid getting into trouble until then?”

 

Lance scoffed. “Of course I can, Pidgey. Don’t worry about me, just focus on completing the mission. Everything will be fine.”

 

“Seriously, Lance,” Shiro cut in, the edges of his voice tainted with fatherly concern and possibly mistrust. Ridiculous. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own?”

 

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been on a solo mission, okay? Don’t worry, I’ve got it.”

 

“But that’s the problem,” Keith added, even though his opinion was obviously unwanted. “This isn’t a solo mission. It’s just you, wandering around by yourself on a giant Galra base while we complete the actual mission, trying not to die or fuck anything up. There’s a much larger propensity for things to go wrong under those circumstances.”

 

“He’s got a point,” Hunk spoke up, making Lance scowl. “If you had a goal or something to accomplish, your uncanny ability to blow stuff up and make giant fucking mistakes might go towards helping that, but now, it might just actually kill you or distract us from our jobs or something.”

 

“Guys! Quit! I’m not gonna _blow anything up_ , okay? Trust me on this. I’m literally just gonna walk around the halls and shoot anything that looks even remotely threatening or Galra and wait until we can leave. It’ll be _fine_.”

 

“Please let this be the day you’re finally right, Lance,” Allura said warily. “It could take us a long time to find you if you’re in trouble.” At least she actually sounded concerned for his well being, instead of just salty about how many missions he’d messed up in the past. It wasn’t his fault he had a short attention span, and that his improvised plans didn’t always work. At least he _had_ a plan.

 

Lance waved off their concern one more time before they returned their focus to the mission and promptly forgot about him. Instead of listening to them yell at each other about “promising hallways” and “red flag red flag danger zones”, Lance shut off the comms and wandered the halls in silence, occasionally humming to himself when he forgot about the fact that he was in a Galra base and humming might get him shot or maimed or killed or all three.

 

The base that they were in today looked exactly like all the other ones they’d infiltrated, except this one was noticeably bigger. They were closer to the center of the empire on this particular trip, and Pidge said this base was a fairly active regional base, so he supposed it made sense. For this being a popular base, though, Lance had run into a worryingly small amount of Galra sentries. He was sure he was being loud and obvious enough for everyone to know he was there, but still, no dice. The hallways were surprisingly empty, and creepily quiet, and if Lance didn’t know for a fact that his friends were here somewhere, he would feel completely alone. He’d never felt like that at a Galra base before, and it was so, _so_ strange.

 

As Lance turned his comms back on to ask if anyone else had a bad feeling about this base, he heard his friends still yelling at each other, but this time it was in more of a “oh shit, the Galra are trying to shoot my balls off” way instead of the “locate the information we need so we can get the fuck off this base” way it had been before. So, maybe the Galra were just busy with them, then.

 

 _“Hunk! Please shoot the Galra and_ not me _,” Pidge requested, in the incredibly pissed off voice she used sometimes when they were being particularly insufferable._

 

_“Sorry! You blend in sometimes.”_

 

_“I am just not even going to respond to that.”_

 

_“I can’t help but feel like you guys are losing focus, just a little.” Shiro cut in, his unimpressed eyebrow raise audible in his voice._

 

 _“None of you are going to comment on the fact that Hunk said that I_ blend in with the Galra _? He was either insulting my height or the way I look, and neither is acceptable! Besides, I’m not even the one with Galra genes!”_

 

_“Leave my Galra genes out of this,” Keith insisted, slightly out of breath. “I don’t look like a Galra, either.”_

 

 _“If the Galra ever try to tap into our comms in the hopes of learning about our battle plan, they are going to be_ so _disappointed.” Allura sighed._

 

 _“I cannot be_ lieve _that none of you are telling Hunk that I don’t look like a_ fucking Galra _!”_

 

_“That’s not what I meant! I just meant that sometimes it’s hard to, you know, see where you are!”_

 

_“And why is that, Hunk?”_

 

_“Any number of reasons, really!”_

 

 _“I can’t believe this. I can_ not _believe this. Absolute disrespect.”_

 

 _“Focus! If we get our asses handed to us because you two are arguing about why it’s easy to lose track of Pidge, I will never be able to look any of you in the eyes ever again._ Just fucking shoot them _.” Shiro instructed, having never sounded so thoroughly exasperated with them._

 

_“Sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun without me,” Lance teased, letting his feet smack against the smooth floor of the base with every step._

 

_“Shut the hell up, Lance!” they all said at once, their voices varying degrees of fucking vicious._

 

_“Alright, alright, alright. Try not to get shot in the butt, I know it’s hard without me there to protect it.”_

 

Trusting them to be able to blow up a few Galra on their own, Lance turned his comms back off and kept on walking, every hallway looking identical to the last. The Galra had to have some sick ass orienteering skills if they were able to navigate all their big, stupid, identical bases all the time without getting horrifically lost. They had duties to do, you know? They couldn’t afford to be _lost_ all the time. Whoever had designed the Galra bases was either a sadist or seriously uncreative. Lance bet it was Zarkon who decided what everything looked like, and he honestly wasn’t surprised. That man had no taste.   

 

Lance had come to the conclusion that he was somewhere near the center of the ship now, probably, and promptly stumbled across a giant, pitch black room looming to his right. Nothing was more downright suspicious than a giant, pitch black room in the center of a ship, and no one was better at investigating suspiciously giant, pitch black rooms in the center of ships than Lance. It was pretty much the only reason he was on the team. He was expendable, so suspicious, definitely dangerous suicide missions were kind of his _thing_.

 

He stood in the doorway of the room (which gave him flashbacks to standing in the doorway of his middle school gym before every school dance, trying to see if it was worth it to actually step inside. Flashbacks that he then immediately tried to ignore because, ew, middle school), assessed it for about five seconds, and then stepped forward and fell into a crouch, continuing forward on all fours with a gun in one hand. The light from the hallway and the open doorway was scarce to begin with and only went so far, meaning Lance was soon completely engulfed in darkness, unable to tell how deep into the room he was getting. Thus far, the room was filled with a whole lot of fucking nothing, but Lance was determined to find something, even if it was just a light switch, or, you know, the other side.

 

Suddenly, Lance’s hands hit something laying on the floor, and before Lance could really stop moving or investigate further or do _anything_ , whatever was on the floor started grabbing him and winding around his limbs and _propelling him into the air_ , if his memory of how it felt to be lifted quickly served him correctly. His eyes were clenched shut tightly as his stomach shifted and settled and rolled around, and he breathed in and out of his nose, trying to convince his body that he _really_ didn’t want to puke today.

 

When he steeled his nerves and peeked one eye open, the first thing he saw was the floor. It was a really very long way away.

 

The second thing he saw was his helmet, laying on the ground on its side, looking perfectly innocent and absolutely fucking _useless_.

 

As Lance slowly took note of his predicament, he was becoming more and more aware of the fact that his teammates were not going to be happy, and that they were going to have to come and save him. Again.

 

Lance was floating, his chest facing the floor, about twenty-five feet above the ground of the room he’d been blindly exploring just seconds ago. The lights had come on sometime during the process of his levitation, and it looked like he was in some sort of giant Galra gymnasium. What the hell did a Galra base need a _gymnasium_ for? Did they have Galra dodgeball matches or some shit? Did they have P.E. classes? Did they have _school dances_?

 

Lance very suddenly wanted to see the entirety of the Galra empire attend a stereotypical school dance. Perhaps that could be their punishment once Voltron finally defeated them? They could broadcast it _everywhere_ and _humiliate them._

 

As Lance examined his body the best he could, he saw that he was tangled in about _fifty thousand_ pieces of rope, all of them big and thick and heavy, kind of glowy and blue, some of which were attaching him to the ceiling via some sort of pulley system that Lance couldn’t crane his head well enough to see, and others that were just kind of casually draped across his body like he was a rich lady and the rope was threads of gold and silver and silk.

 

All in all, the whole scenario was marginally painful, given how tightly his limbs were being pulled in each respective direction and how fucking ridiculously heavy the ropes dangling off his body were proving to be. Lance’s right arm was held aloft by the piece of rope somehow _tied,_ like, _in a proper knot_ , around his wrist, digging into the flesh like it was a fancy meal. His other arm was pinned to his side by the ropes wound around his torso, all thirty-seven and a half of them.

 

The ropes suspending his torso region were wedged under his chest and across his stomach, slowly yet successfully squeezing the air out of his lungs due to the devastating teamwork of gravity and _heavy, dangly ropes._ His left leg was wrapped in rope like it was May Day, the rope was ribbon, and his leg was a May Day pole. Seriously, there were like three different ropes woven in an intricate pattern around his leg, like that was a legitimate possibility when the entire getting-tangled-in-rope thing had transpired in about thirty seconds. It looked kind of cool, almost, but it hurt, because the rope was thick and wrapped in multiple layers around his skin and just as a general rule, rope was in no way comfortable and had no apparent sense of personal space. Another rope was cradling his right thigh, quite simplistically, given the way the rest of his body looked, and yet another looped down and was tied around his ankle _in a nice pretty little bow that refused to stop taunting him_ , looser than those squeezing the hell out of his left leg but still straining on his joints.

 

In Lance’s mind, this was all literally impossible. How the hell had he gotten this fucking tied up in less than a minute, all by himself, with no idea what was happening or what he had found laying on the ground? There was no way. Lance may have been an asshole, but never to himself, not like this. There was no way this happened on accident. _There were ropes tied in bows, for fuck's sake._ However, he decided he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to think about it. Lance did not want to know how he’d gotten so monumentally tangled up in these ropes, or how he’d wound up suspended twenty-five feet in the air in consequence, or why he’d decided to explore a pitch black room in the center of a rival base _anyway_ , especially when it was _clearly_ a trap. A trap that he’d walked right into.

 

Where better to corner the Paladins of Voltron than in a weird, giant, ricochet-y gymnasium room where their team member was an easy, stationary, floating target?

 

Lance was never gonna be able to go on a mission ever again. He could pretty much kiss his title “Blue Paladin of Voltron” goodbye, because he was about one stupid-and-incapable-teammate rescue mission away from being ejected into space.   

 

With a sigh, Lance began to attempt to count how many ropes he was tangled in. Only six of them lead to the rafters of the ceiling, those six consisting of the one wrapped around his wrist, the one squeezing the life from his chest and stomach, the one (possibly plural, he couldn’t _really_ tell, but only one led up to the ceiling, so) around his left leg, that of which deserved to be in an art museum with the amount of talent that’d been put into its ropey design, and the ones around his right thigh and ankle, stupidly boring. The rest of them were just kind of hanging off in a bunch of places, trying to pull his skin off of his bones with their weight. Lance didn’t know how many there really were, it was impossible to tell, but they were crisscrossing his body like there were a million of them, and they were hopelessly tangled either way.

 

Lance finally looked down again as he was trying to follow the rope’s path with his eyes, and that’s when he saw his bayard: still activated, hanging in the air just like he was, but chilling out a good ten feet below him and wrapped up in rope, one of which was connected to Lance somewhere and acting as the tether, located somewhere down by his left mid-thigh.  

 

It did not look like there was any way in hell he could reach it. Which meant he would have to wait for his friends to find him. Which was even worse than before, because his helmet was on the ground. With the comms turned off. And as far as Lance knew, which, admittedly, wasn’t very far right now, Pidge still hadn’t reconnected with his suit.

 

So all he could do was hang from the ceiling and hope the rope -- seriously, who the _fuck_ needed rope that weighed this much? -- didn’t tear his limbs from his body and prematurely stop his breathing before anyone could find him, Galra or otherwise. Because, honestly, what a fucking embarrassing way to die.

 

* * *

 

“Lance,” Keith sighed as they turned into yet _another_ hallway, still on the lookout for their stupid, stupid teammate. “We seriously don’t have time for this. May I remind you that we’re _two starsystems_ away from the center of the Galra empire? We don’t have time to dick around. We’ve got the intel, so this is the part where we leave.”

 

“I know I haven’t reconnected with your suit yet,” Pidge continued, sounding just as exasperated. “but I’m super close. Can you just like, describe where you are?”

 

“Shouldn’t _we_ describe where _we_ are?” Hunk asked. “You know, since we’re all together and Lance is by himself, and we’re closer to the exit than he is? I mean, probably. We admittedly don’t _actually_ know where he is, but it's probably pretty safe to assume that-”

 

“Whatever! It doesn’t matter! _I just want to get off this stupid base_.” Pidge snapped, her hands _vibrating_ on her keyboard in her attempt to reach Lance’s suit. Shiro sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and scrunching up his eyes and the sea of skin in between in utter resignation.

 

“Why isn’t he responding? Can anyone tell me why he isn’t responding?”

 

“Because he got hit in the head and forgot how to speak?” Allura suggested, shrugging.

 

“Because he decided to play hard to get?” Keith added, raising his eyebrows.

 

“Because he’s being a petulant asshole…?” Hunk guessed. They waited with bated breath for Lance’s typical offended _Hey!_ to ring out over the comms, but nothing came. So, something really was wrong, then. Lance never let himself be insulted, whether the insult was born of truth or otherwise.

 

And, of _course_ Lance was in trouble, because he couldn’t go _thirty minutes_ without fucking something up, apparently.

 

“Doesn’t matter why he hasn’t said anything,” Pidge interrupted, waving a hand as she set off down the hall. “I’ve got his location. Let’s go.”   

 

* * *

 

Lance had a poor sense of time and therefore had no idea how long he’d been hanging from the ceiling, but he was starting to freak out a little.

 

It really wouldn’t have been so bad if he knew where his friends were, or if he knew that they knew he needed help and were on their way, or if the ropes weren’t slowly burning into his suit and his skin and trying to drag him to the floor while different ropes held him up. It really wouldn’t have been that bad if he had the ability to take a proper breath, and if the blood wasn’t rushing to his head every time he got too tired to hold it up.

 

However, none of those things were a reality, so Lance was left, stuck twenty-five feet in the air, trying to flip himself over or loosen the ropes or do _something_ to get a full breath of air and calm his nerves and the rapid beat of his heart.

 

None of his attempts were working, unfortunately.

 

He couldn’t flip over because of his May Day leg, and he couldn’t loosen the ropes, because somewhere along the way he’d ascertained that the ropes squeezing his abdomen weren’t going to loosen unless he somehow found a way to stop resting his entire fucking body weight on top of them. Which was impossible. They were supporting most of his body weight, after all, and their ends were tied to the rafters, helping hold him up. There was no way to avoid that.

 

And even if he managed to take care of that issue, there were still the ropes that pinning his right arm to his side, wrapped around his torso with the ends dangling freely somewhere beneath him, which Lance wouldn’t be able to loosen unless he somehow gathered up all the ends, which was _so_ not happening.

 

Now, it was getting to the point where he really couldn’t breathe, and not even just because of the ropes, but also because of the panic flooding his veins and constricting his throat as he tried to suck frantic breaths into his compacted lungs. He felt hot and heavy and trapped, and he couldn’t free his limbs or push the weight off of his skin no matter how hard he tried, and even if he did, he’d probably just fall to the ground and die, or, you know, break something. Unless his friends found him, which was looking less and less likely to happen in a timely matter, Lance was just fucking stuck.

 

Even when his eyes were open it was like they were closed, his vision swimming and hazy and clouded with black spots. His limbs were shaking, partially from his struggle to free himself and partially from his panic to do so, and his lungs felt like they just weren’t even fucking working anymore, for all the good they were doing. Lance was trying very hard not to cry, trying not to call out, trying not to scream and thrash around and claw at whatever his incapacitated hands could reach. He allowed himself a whimper instead.

 

His neck was getting really tired of holding his head up, and he had a headache from the excess of blood and the strain, and he was sweating so much that his suit felt like it could slide right off his body and join his helmet on the ground below him.

 

Eventually, he gathered his strength and used his tied wrist and his wrapped leg to try and pull himself up and stop leaning his weight on the ropes underneath him, but the others were still were wrapped around him too tightly and it only helped a little, much like he imagined. Lance wished he could free his other arm, wished he didn’t feel so damn uncomfortable and trapped and overheated and _helpless_. He hadn’t felt like this since he was young, hadn’t felt this frustrated since he first began the long journey of trying to figure out who he was and where he belonged in the world. He hated feeling like this again, especially since it was entirely his fault this time.

 

If he would have just taken a second to think, taken a second to evaluate the situation and _open his fucking eyes_ , he wouldn’t feel like clawing the skin off his body and screaming bloody murder and locking himself in a freezer. He would’ve already reunited with his team and been long gone, safe and comfortable and not fucking hanging from the ceiling of a Galra gym.

 

The heat was crawling over his skin in waves and the ropes were rubbing against his flesh and leaving angry red marks behind, even through his suit, and he couldn’t help but let out a frustrated sob as his resolve crumbled and his muscles went slack.

 

Stupid Galra Ropes That Had Somehow Managed To Put Him In The Worst Position He’d Ever Been In: 1

 

Lance: 0

 

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t wiggle free and he couldn’t call for help and he couldn’t fucking _breathe_ and it was so fucking hot in here and he felt like he was going to pass out and he _wanted to_ , because then he could just rest and not worry about how he was going to get down from the _fucking ceiling_ when his friends had no idea where he was or that he needed them to help him.

 

It was then that he thought about the fact that maybe his friends had already left. Maybe they’d accomplished their mission and forgotten about him because his comms were off and he was completely quiet. Lance knew he was easy to forget about when he was quiet, it was a lesson he’d learned the hard way when he was younger, which was why he was always loud, always talking. He couldn’t stand the thought of people forgetting he was there, or the thought of people looking over him and forgetting to see him, or even worse, choosing not to. It made him lose sleep at night, so he always resolved to _make_ them see him, whether they wanted to or not.

 

And that particular thought process by _no_ means helped his current situation, only served to make him more fucking frustrated, because everything was his fault and he shouldn’t have turned off his comms and he shouldn’t have gotten separated in the _first place_ and he _especially_ shouldn’t have walked into a room while blind and _god_ , why couldn’t he just be a  _productive member of the team_?

 

Lance was crying now, unable to stop it or hold it in anymore. No one was here to hear him, anyway, and it made him feel a tiny bit better, even if he didn't really have the breath to spare for it.

 

Lance pulled himself up with the ropes again and yelped in pain as it squeezed his wrist, but ultimately ignored it as he used the tiny bit of freedom he’d gained to breathe as deep as he could, even though his limbs were shaking and he was hiccuping and whimpering and making all sorts of pathetic noises he was glad no one could hear. He took the very deepest breaths he could until his limbs gave the fuck up on him and collapsed, making him fall back into the cruel embrace of the ropes he’d been momentarily free of.

 

“ _Fuck!_ ” Lance yelled as loud as he could, partly to vent his frustration and partly because it _fucking_ hurt. Nothing about any of this was fun, and Lance wanted to die. With his fall, he’d lost most of the air he’d managed to pull into his lungs, and he didn’t want to try again, wary of the pinch of the rope on his skin and the effort it took to stand that way.

 

That was about the time he realized his entire team was standing on the floor and looking up at him with horrified concern on their faces, looking shocked and completely unsure of what to do.

 

Lance tried to calm his raging heart and wipe the tears wetting his face off on whatever part of his suit he could reach without the use of his arms before shooting them a weak, sheepish smile.

 

“Oh hey, guys,” he did a little wave with his right hand, stopping almost immediately because it hurt. “Did we win?” Lance cringed at the way his voice shook and broke over his words. They just stared up at him in shock.

 

“ _Lance_?” Pidge asked incredulously, stepping closer and craning her head to look. “What the hell _happened_?”

 

“I- um,” Lance stammered, his eyes darting to either side frantically. He could still feel his heart stuttering in his chest, because not only was he still fucking stuck and uncomfortable and unable to move, but he was also embarrassed that his team was seeing him like this, both dangling from the sky and having a breakdown. “I’d really rather not say. It’s not important, you know? All that matters is that you guys are here now, and you can get me down.”

 

“Lance.”

 

Lance sighed, giving them his best unimpressed look, even though he was probably the least amount of unimpressed out of all of them, given the situation. “Well, I was wandering the halls, just like I said I would, and I came across this room, and it was big and dark and suspicious, so, _you know_. I decided to walk in and explore a little bit, and here we are.”

 

“And let me guess,” Keith said, crossing his arms and tilting his head back. “You didn’t turn on _any_ lights? Not even the ones on your suit?”

 

It was safe to say Lance had completely forgotten about the lights on his suit.

 

Keith sounded so _not_ surprised and so disappointed and so devoid of sympathy that Lance started crying again, his reactions out of his control at this point. His body felt so heavy now, like any second he’d break free of the ropes and go cascading downwards in a whirlwind of pointlessness.

 

“Hey, hey, Lance. It’s okay. Let’s just get you down from there, okay?” Shiro said, holding out his hands like Lance was a damn wild animal. A wounded noise ripped itself from Lance’s throat, and it was so obvious that the others didn’t know what to do. Lance had never broken down like this in front of them before. It wasn’t his fault, though, he just _really_ didn’t like being up here. He needed to get down.

 

That was, of course, the most opportune time for the Galra to rear their ugly heads and flood into the room like a bunch of rats, yelling like it was the only way the paladins would know they were there. Lance made a noise of alarm in the back of his throat and began to wiggle his limbs again, distraught at the thought of staying up here even a second longer.

 

Despite that, the paladins were soon occupied, and Lance tried not to panic again. It was obvious they were struggling a bit without their sniper to help, and Lance so desperately wanted to, but his gun might as well’ve been on the ground for all the good it did him.

 

That didn’t stop him from trying, though.

 

Lance grit his teeth and huffed out a strained breath as he tensed his muscles, trying to get his left leg to cooperate. The ropes were wound around it so tightly that even flexing his muscles hurt, but he bit his lip, grunted, and tried to yank his leg forward enough to hit the rope his gun was hanging from and swing it a little anyway. It didn’t work, because he couldn’t bend his leg really at all, but Lance tried again, groaning at the sting of his skin being molded to the shape of the rope as he tried to nudge his hanging gun again. He barely hit it that time.

 

Lance swung his whole body next, deciding it might be easier than just his leg, but he yelped in pain and immediately tried to stop swaying as the movement only served to rip the skin around his wrist.

 

“Lance,” Allura cautioned, knowing by now that Lance was probably being stupid. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it. We’ll help you as soon as we’re done here.”

 

It didn’t look like they were going to be done anytime soon, though, and more and more Galra just kept pouring in the open room, and Lance needed to be free so _fucking badly_ and he wanted to help his friends so _fucking badly_ that he just ignored her and tried again, going back to moving just his leg.

 

Lance was full-on panicking again, unable to split his focus between his gun and his friends and the stray shots pointed at him in an effective manner.

 

His efforts on his gun were going nowhere and it was making him frustrated all over again, making him pant and sweat and shake in his effort to move and ignore the pain flaring up and down his nerves. Then, every once in a while, his brain would remind him of the fight going on below him and he’d freeze, his entire body going into a cold sweat as he frantically scanned the room and located all of his friends, each of them with a few more injuries than the last time he checked. Then, his brain would remind him that he could be shot at any time and there was literally nothing he could do, nowhere he could go, and it’d make him thrash and pry desperately at the ropes digging into his skin and holding him up. And then, the cycle would start over.

 

Lance was so exhausted and so out of it that he almost didn’t notice when he managed to jerk his leg enough to nudge his gun and swing it a little, just enough for the next nudge to be easier and smoother. Before he knew it, Lance was awkwardly holding his gun in his pinned hand and trying to aim, taking the deepest breaths possible to steady his shaking hands.

 

He aimed at Galra far away from his friends at first, not wanting to take any chances with his aim. It was much harder with the gravity pulling on the muzzle and the rope restricting his movements and his head bent down to look at where he was shooting, but he felt infinitely better to even just have the _ability_ to help his friends. Plus, his aim wasn’t _that bad_ , all things considered, and the battle seemed to move faster with his help.

 

But still, the ropes. No matter what else there was for Lance’s brain to focus on, he couldn’t stop thinking about the _fucking ropes_ , couldn’t stop thinking about the weight of them on his skin and how he wanted to fucking crawl out of it to get away from them. They were weighing on his thoughts, weighing on his skin, and he couldn’t help but fidget, couldn’t help but occasionally lose focus and stare helplessly at the ropes that he couldn’t get rid of on his own. Because, yes, he had his gun now, but he couldn’t angle it to shoot at them without hitting some other part of him, couldn’t even reach most of them. And if he did shoot them, then what? He’d just plummet down and land on top of a bunch of Galra and maybe some of his friends, none of which were prepared to catch him.

 

That’s why Lance ended up dropping his gun; he couldn’t fucking stop _panicking about the ropes_. He wanted them gone. He _needed_ them gone. He couldn’t breathe with them around him, couldn’t move with them there, couldn’t stop worrying about would happen if they never got him down and he never got free and the ropes clung to his skin forever. He’d go fucking insane. That couldn’t happen, he couldn’t stay like this forever. He couldn’t stay like this for even another minute.

 

“Lance!” Lance’s head jerked to look at Pidge as she yelled at him, her hands cupped around her mouth as her voice echoed around the big, empty room. It looked like she’d been calling to him for a long time now. “We’re gonna cut you down, okay? But don’t freak out; we’ll catch you.”

 

With that, Keith pulled his bayard out of his pocket, activated it, took about point two seconds to aim, and chucked it as hard as he could, causing Lance to close his eyes as it soared through the air and effortlessly cut the rope holding up his right ankle. His right thigh was next, after Keith retrieved his sword, followed by his left leg, his wrist, his stomach, and his chest. His right arm was still trapped from the random ropes tangled around his torso, but as he fell, he felt them loosen their grip on his skin and allow him to breathe, and after the paladins caught him and set him on the ground, he just laid there and sobbed and choked on the heaving breaths he was pulling into his lungs, probably looking like a shaking, pathetic mess but unable to focus or realize or care.

 

It was then that Lance decided he really didn’t like being tied up.

 

It took him a long time to realize that he’d pulled his body into a ball as he cried, and that someone had wrapped their arms around him and was now holding him against their chest, and that that person was Keith. It took him even longer to realize that he didn’t mind it, that Keith’s skin was warm and smelled like gunsmoke and was soft to the touch.

 

Keith eventually slid his arms under Lance’s upper back and knees and picked him up, letting Lance curl up against his chest as he carried him out of the base on steady, sturdy feet that Lance didn’t possess at the moment.

 

Lance also realized that people were talking to him and that he was making small, random noises in the back of his throat, but his head was foggy and his eyelids were heavy and he couldn’t focus on _anything_ , let alone things as precise as words and thoughts and emotions.

 

So instead he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until he stepped out of the healing pod, confused when everyone just stood there and grinned at him. Pidge then explained that Lance had literally refused to let go of Keith, even to get in the healing pod, and that they only got him in there by telling him Keith was already waiting inside (even though Lance’s face was literally buried in Keith’s neck when they told him this, he still perked right the fuck up anyway and got his ass inside the healing pod as fast as he could. Or, so he was told. Substantial evidence was still needed).

 

Lance then went ahead and said what they were all thinking and declared he was never going on a mission ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed !!!


End file.
